


blame it on the [croissant]

by goosewriting



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, I have no idea what to tag this as, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, author ignores canon in favor of found family, croissants disobeying the metaphysical laws of the land, i did something kinda weird with the footnotes on this one and im sorry in advance, idiots to lovers, its mostly a mistake, kissing because of a croissant mistake, miracle-based tea fighting, newt is only VAGUELY mentioned im SORRY newt stans (do those exist?), scone crumbs in the eyebrows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22127599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosewriting/pseuds/goosewriting
Summary: Not to say they’ve never exchanged kisses before. Aziraphale actually invented la bise— the French custom of kissing a companion on both cheeks as a form of greeting— as an excuse to peck Crowley twice every time they’d meet and receive two kisses in return. The kissing-related inventions that Crowley is credited for are often classified as more diabolical, but he is only truly to blame for the advent of the ever-polite knuckle kiss, which he created as a method by which he could both hold and kiss Aziraphale’s hand.(Did he create French kissing? By no means. Was he present when it happened for the first time? Well, who can say, really?)However, this is the first time they kiss. As in, for truly, unabashedly romantic purposes, on the mouth. Clear intentions. Nervous movements. The whole shebang.-------Crowley and Aziraphale have been dancing around some pretty big admissions for six-thousand years. The idea that those admissions could be forced out by some pastry-related mess and a tea stain is pretty absurd, and yet... here we are.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 171





	blame it on the [croissant]

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fanfiction adventure since I wrote Doctor Who fic on fanfiction.net in, like, 2010, so it's been a second. this is the first of many stupid fics i hope to throw into the void. it's short. i hope it's alright. mwah.
> 
> yes, i know that canonically anathema and newt and all of them don't remember the Almostpocalypse, but i looked at that shred of canon and decided to pretend id never heard it. i can't be stopped

The first time they kiss, to say it’s  _ sudden _ would be both a truth and a lie. 

Perhaps sudden is the wrong word. Relative to the past 6000 years, it’s quite sudden, yes. Their abrupt heel-turn from avoidant (for survival’s sake) to avoidant (for fear of rejection) to non-avoidant is something that could be classified as “sudden”. However, if you shift the lens just slightly, this has been such,  _ such _ a long time coming.

After all, after 6000 years of pining, one kiss is nothing. It’s not sudden at all. It’s a move toward the end of the world’s longest waiting game. 

Not to say they’ve never exchanged kisses before. Aziraphale actually invented  _ la bise _ — the French custom of kissing a companion on both cheeks as a form of greeting— as an excuse to peck Crowley twice every time they’d meet and receive two kisses in return. The kissing-related inventions that Crowley is credited for are often classified as more diabolical, but he is only truly to blame for the advent of the ever-polite knuckle kiss, which he created as a method by which he could both hold  _ and _ kiss Aziraphale’s hand. 

(Did he  _ create _ French kissing? By no means. Was he present when it happened for the first time? Well, who can say, really?)

However, this is the first time they  _ kiss.  _ As in, for truly, unabashedly romantic purposes, on the mouth. Clear intentions. Nervous movements. The whole shebang. 

Aziraphale invites Crowley over for tea, which has a slew of implications in and of itself. Ever since the not-so-apocalypse, they’ve been around one another— comfortably, casually, carelessly— a  _ lot.  _ For the first time in either of their 6000-year-long existences, they both feel  _ free _ , which means that their most recent meet-ups have a looseness to them that they’d never quite had before. 

These meet-ups have also become increasingly  _ frequent  _ and increasingly  _ charged.  _

Neither of them have the guts to address the millenia-old, heavy  _ feelings _ that rest in the pits of their stomachs, but something in the recent change of wind has caused those feelings to become incredibly palpable. Aziraphale, as he waits for Crowley to arrive for their scheduled tea, thinks perhaps he could cut the tension with a knife and spread it on the warm, fresh-baked croissants he got for them to eat. He wonders how tension tastes. Probably not as good as butter and jam, he concludes, but maybe he should try it sometime. 

Crowley arrives at the shop with a tinkling that could be attributed to the bell above the door, but could also be accredited to the angel’s joy at his arrival. “Good morning, my dear,” he greets warmly, pulled from his reverie. 

“Morning, angel,” Crowley hums, strutting past Aziraphale and to the loveseat by the shop’s West side windows. Aziraphale stands a couple of feet away, sunlight ringing him and surrounding him in dust motes that catch in the air and dance when he turns to face Crowley. As the demon flops onto the aforementioned loveseat, arms outstretched along its back, he keeps talking. “Sweet dreams, I presume?”

“Oh, Crowley, you know I don’t sleep,” he says curtly, and for the record, if he did sleep, he’d be losing hours over his unsettled feelings. “But you seem well rested.” 

“I am,” he confirms. “The road outside my flat was closed last night, so the bloody noise pollution was next-to-none. Slept like a baby. Well, not a baby, they aren’t actually great sleepers, I should know. Slept like a snake.” 

Aziraphale laughs. (He doesn’t catch how his laugh makes Crowley’s face light up.) Since the Notpocalypse, there is no Upstairs to notice when Aziraphale miracles the street outside of the demon’s flat to be quieter than usual so that he can get some well-deserved, post-Armaggedon’t rest. 

“I got us croissants,” Aziraphale says after a brief pause, moving around the cluttered coffee table to sit at Crowley’s side. He pulls the brown paper bag from the table, unfurling the top in order to access the flaky pastries. He pointedly  _ doesn’t _ think about how the demon’s draped arm falls behind him on the couch-back.

Crowley is watching him, yellow-eyed, from behind his sunglasses. He doesn’t think about that either. “Croissants?”

“I was speaking with our Newton Pulsifer the other day* and he told me that the new bakery two streets down is extraordinary, so I  _ had _ to see what the fuss was about. Now, I don’t know if they’re going to be as good as he seemed to think they are,” he’s buttering-and-jamming a croissant for Crowley as he speaks, and Crowley leans forward to grab his tea, “but I figured we’ll never know unless we try, correct? And, either way, I figured we should humor the poor boy.” 

* _ Crowley and Aziraphale, at this point, both find themselves spending time with the other people who’d been witness to the Almostpocalypse since the whole thing went down. They didn’t dare even pretend to be bothered about it. After all, they were the only people that knew it happened, and that had inadvertently forged an unbreakable bond between them all. _

Crowley just sort of hums in agreement, taking a couple swigs of his tea. “He’s only been around, what, twenty, thirty-something years? How many croissants can he have tried?” He sets his tea back down. 

“Enough that he felt the need to tell me about these*,” Aziraphale answers what was otherwise a rhetorical question, as he’s never been good at knowing the difference. “But they have to be better than the first croissants.” 

* _ If you asked Newt why he felt the need to tell Aziraphale about these croissants, it might not be due to their superb quality insomuch as it was due to his anxiety at spending time with an angel and his lack of understanding of what an angel such as Aziraphale might like to talk about. _

“August burnt them, I remember,” Crowley agrees, taking the croissant as it’s handed to him. Croissants have been refined quite a bit since 1839. 

“Third time truly was the charm with that fellow*,” Aziraphale nods. He butters himself a croissant and then leans back, feeling the top of his shoulderblades graze Crowley’s sleeved arm where it snakes along the back of the loveseat. 

* _ Whether or not August Zang’s success on the third try was a product of miraculous intervention is hard to say. _

The two of them take a bite of their respective croissants at the same time. Aziraphale hums happily into his bite, letting his eyes flutter closed and savoring the flavor. When he opens his eyes to look at Crowley, he’s very pointedly  _ not _ looking at Aziraphale, simply chewing away at a mouthful of yeast and jam and such. “Oh, they’re delightful,” Aziraphale says joyfully. “Almost melt-in-your-mouth.”

Crowley swallows, eyes turning back to Aziraphale. “ _ Almost _ ,” Crowley replies, verbally drawing two lines beneath the word. “They’re great croissants, angel, but hardly worth raving about.”

“Oh, Crowley, don’t be so dark. They’re delicious.” Crowley, ever-contradictive, is eating more of the croissant as they speak, seemingly very into it.

So into it, in fact, that he’s failed to keep himself completely tidy. Not so much in the crumb department— he must be miracling them away as they fall, because there is hardly a blemish on his night-black clothing— but, rather, in the jam-on-the-lip department. 

“Oh, my dear, you’ve got something on your lip,” Aziraphale says, keen to mention it. When Crowley does no more than look at Aziraphale— perhaps confused, perhaps expectant— and makes no move to get the offending jam off, Aziraphale huffs a bit. “Really, dear boy, must I do everything myself?”

With a swift miracle, Aziraphale’s croissant is gone and his hand is completely clean of any butter or crumbs. He leans in to Crowley, whose croissant has also disappeared (whether to the same place as Aziraphale’s or into his mouth is yet to be seen) and swipes a thumb over his lower lip, the pad of it effectively removing the jelly. 

It is also effective in reddening the shade of the demon’s face by several integers. Aziraphale’s face heats up in response.  _ His  _ eyes are wide, and he wishes he could see Crowley’s. Damned glasses. 

There  _ is _ a flick of movement behind those glasses, though, Aziraphale registers that— and— _ did he just look at my lips? Oh heavens—  _ and Aziraphale barely notices that he’s sort of switched to cradling Crowley’s face, and that Crowley is pressing into the contact, and  _ oh, good Lord—  _

With a cough on both of their parts, they pull out of the moment. The hand that once held Crowley’s face is now preoccupied with some tea, and Crowley’s croissant has suddenly made a miraculous reappearance. Neither of them are looking at each other— rather, they’ve both simultaneously decided that literally  _ anything _ in the bookshop is more interesting than the blush creeping across both their faces or the recent memory of how Aziraphale’s fingertip felt on Crowley’s lips.

Aziraphale commits a minor miracle to reality with less than a thought and looks over to see that both of the mugs-that-once-held-tea are blessedly empty. He stands up quicker than is necessary and grabs them, bustling off with a hushed excuse about making more tea. Crowley doesn’t make a single sound as Aziraphale leaves the room.

—————

The next time Crowley comes for tea, Aziraphale has no pastries prepared. Lucky for him, Crowley does. 

“I got them from that bakery you like,” he offers as way of explanation, plopping a bag of unknown items onto the coffee table and throwing his sunglasses down after it. He stalks around the table’s circumference, coming to rest beside Aziraphale on the loveseat.*

* _ Perhaps one of the more odd things that’s changed since the Armaggedon-That-Wasn’t is that Aziraphale now chooses to sit beside Crowley on the loveseat at all. His armchair sits, unoccupied by the usual celestial weight. Crowley doesn’t try to think about what it means that the angel has eliminated the space between them that he usually maintains.  _

Aziraphale looks from the bag, to him, then back to the bag, expecting further prompting. When he receives nothing, he grabs the bag delicately and peers inside. 

“Ah, scones!” he delights, pulling one out and smelling it. “Orange and cranberry, how scrumptious. And the bake on these is perfect!” 

“It could be better,” Crowley drawls critically, reaching over to retrieve a still-warm, miraculously-buttered scone of his own*. 

_ *Crowley holds himself to be more knowledgeable on this sort of thing, seeing as he’s watched far more Bake Off than Aziraphale.  _

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale says through a mouthful of pastry. “Delectable. Sublime.”

Crowley gives a sound of half-hearted denial around a bite of scone. They’re both quiet for a long moment— Aziraphale lets his eyes drift shut and gives a breathy sigh at the way the flavors mingle in his mouth. 

“Angel,” comes Crowley’s voice in an incredulous tone. Aziraphale opens his eyes and hums in question. There’s amusement in the lines of Crowley’s face. “How did you get crumbs in your eyebrow? You’ve had one bloody bite, you madman—“

And his scone is gone, miracled out of his hand. Crowley is grinning lightly. His fingers gently brace the side of Aziraphale’s head so that he can brush at the angel’s eyebrow with the pad of his thumb. 

Aziraphale  _ freezes.  _ Crowley feels him freeze. Crowley freezes, a deer caught in his own damned headlights. Crowley begins to speak— quietly, reverently. “Angel—“ 

Suddenly, the mugs of tea are empty. Neither of them had even touched them yet, let alone taken a drink. 

Aziraphale jumps off the couch, scooping up the mugs and spouting excuses as he begins to bustle toward the bookshop’s kitchenette. Crowley hangs in the air where Aziraphale left him.

He blinks. 

The mugs are full again. Aziraphale stops in his tracks, adjusts his grip against the sudden weight, and doesn’t dare look at Crowley. He stares straight ahead.

“I think you’ll find there’s no reason for you to put the kettle on, angel,” Crowley insists, eyes heavy on Aziraphale’s back.

Aziraphale turns on his heel, and the mugs are empty again. “Oh, but we’re out of tea, my dear.” He rotates one of the mugs to show Crowley--  _ look, it’s empty!  _ Crowley grimaces.  _ Bastard.  _

Crowley gets up in a swift movement and stalks closer in three quick steps, his hands shoved in his pockets. The mugs refill as he approaches. “No, we aren’t, Aziraphale. There’s plenty of tea there, look.” 

Aziraphale smiles tightly, shifting the mugs in his hand. They’re hot. He will not lose this. He doesn’t hide the miracle he uses to drain them again, and Crowley’s yellow-slit eyes pointedly watch as they empty out to nowhere. “No, dear boy, I’m  _ quite  _ afraid these mugs are empty.” 

Crowley raises his hand. Snaps. “No, these mugs are full.” The line of his mouth is flat and grim. 

“No, they’re  _ empty,” _ Aziraphale insists, thrusting the cup forward. In his insistence, though, he forgets to miracle them to be such, and is duly surprised when the mugful of hot liquid flies out of its constraints and ends up all over Crowley’s front. 

Crowley is surprised, too. He holds his arms apart from his body, looking down at his dripping shirt. Whatever odd fight Aziraphale had in him leaves like a popped balloon. “Oh, oh, my dear--”

“Save it, angel,” Crowley says glumly. “I mean-- okay. If you don’t want to talk about this, then  _ bloody say so,  _ okay? You don’t have to throw tea at me to get your  _ bloody _ point across.” He notes this all quickly, firmly, as he walks around Aziraphale’s frozen figure to the kitchen. He disappears through the doorway. 

Aziraphale deflates. The mugs vanish from his hands completely and he hears them shatter on the pavement outside of the bookshop. Ah, well. He didn’t like them so well anyway. 

With footsteps light as featherfall, Aziraphale follows Crowley’s path to the kitchen. There, he’s quietly soaking up the brunt of the stain with a wad of paper towels, frowning to himself. He’s miracled his sunglasses back on. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, all quiet. 

“Don’t,” Crowley responds. 

“Just miracle it away,” Aziraphale suggests, eyebrows drawn together, standing across the kitchen, which now feels like a horribly vast expanse. His concern is palpable-- concern not for  _ him,  _ but for  _ them.  _

Crowley stops sopping up the tea and looks at Aziraphale with a scalding look. “I’d always know it was there,” he declares mockingly. 

Aziraphale scoffs, rolls his eyes. He snaps his fingers-- a quick draw-down-- and the stain vanishes. 

Now without something to do, Crowley folds his arms over himself, looking into the sink. 

The angel breaks their momentary silence by deciding, all in all, to be quite brave. “What did you want to talk about?” The question comes out in an unfairly demure way. 

Crowley’s face shifts to a look of pain. He makes a couple noncommittal sounds, then breathes out slowly, collecting himself. “It’s been-- it’s been  _ two months.”  _

“Since--” 

“Since we stopped the Apocalypse, yeah. I-- I don’t know,” he huffs, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I just-- thought, since it  _ happened _ , and we’re-- we’re on  _ our side-- _ I figured we could…  _ talk.  _ About…”

Aziraphale clicks into understanding. “About us.” 

Crowley curls in on himself a bit, eyes still averted, and makes an affirmative sound. “Thought it would happen sooner-- but I know you don’t like  _ fast,” _ he murmurs. “Just. ‘Don’t want to rush you, ‘Ziraphale. I just-- you look at me how you do and I just-- I want to--” He chokes on his words, pauses, and decides to start somewhere different. “I don’t want to push you away, I-- just want to know we’ll get there someday. Want to know I haven’t ruined it somehow.” He’s still pointedly not looking at Aziraphale, deciding instead to study the wall. 

The angel releases a breath. “Did-- did  _ I _ ruin it?”

Crowley looks at him, then, incredulous. “What?” 

Aziraphale moves forward a couple of steps, then seems to think better of it and stops, hands fisted at his front. “To be frank, I-- I, I wasn’t sure if I had-- if I had put you off entirely. I said-- I said some  _ awful _ things, Crowley, things I didn’t mean. I haven’t gotten to apologize.” 

Crowley’s face softens. “Angel, you couldn’t put me off.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Aziraphale states hurriedly, suddenly very interested in his hands. “After the commotion in the sixties about your  _ speed,  _ then-- then  _ Alpha Centauri,  _ then the bandstand, and-- oh,” he says, the enormity of how much he hurt Crowley hitting him like a speeding, flaming Bentley. He looks up at him, frowning. “Oh, my dear, I, I do apologize. I must have broken your heart-- more than once, I’m afraid. I don’t know how you could ever forgive me.” 

Crowley moves forward off the counter then, toward Aziraphale. Aziraphale draws a breath and meets him in the middle. Crowley wraps his arms around him, tucks his head over his shoulder, and holds fast. Aziraphale clings to the demon like he’s all that’s keeping him afloat.

“Like this,” Crowley hums. “It’s okay, angel.”

“I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers back, face buried in Crowley’s neck, hands grasping at the back of his shirt. “I’m so very sorry. Do you-- can you still--” 

Crowley’s arms around him grasp harder. “Angel-- Aziraphale. I love you, too. I love you. I do.”

“My darling, thank you,” Aziraphale breathes, rather desperate. “I must admit, I-- I haven’t… owned any tea since before the last time you were here, dear. I rather just didn’t want to be the one to-- make a move, as it were.” 

“Oh, angel, if you’d just left the damned tea, you wouldn’t have had to make the move, I can assure you,” Crowley laughs into his hair, and Aziraphale can’t help but grin. “Let me buy you more pastries, I know you like pastries-- I’ll get the crumbs off your face next time and I  _ promise _ you, I’ll make the move. We can try again, get it right this time.” 

Aziraphale makes a pleased sound, then loosens his grip on Crowley, pulling back to look at him and moving one hand to remove his sunglasses. “Or you could-- just--” 

Crowley smiles and Aziraphale kisses him, and  _ God, Satan,  _ the six-thousand-year waiting game was worth it. They stand in the kitchenette, kissing with all the passion that those six-thousand-years entails. 

“You taste like cranberry,” Aziraphale pulls back to laugh a minute or two later. “And orange.” 

Crowley places a kiss on his jaw. “You taste like miracled tea,” he states. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since Mesopotamia.” 

Aziraphale meets his lips again. “I’ve wanted to since Rome,” he admits a moment later, forehead resting against Crowley’s. “I invented the  _ osculum figere _ just so I could kiss you as we parted outside the baths.” 

Crowley grins. “Bastard.” 

“I am. And you love me.”

“And I love you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, o reader, for reading! i appreciate you very much!
> 
> note: _osculum figere_ is an ancient roman term meaning “press little mouths” and was basically a friendly/non-romantic kiss on the mouth. a lil bro kiss. (as far as i’m aware.) 
> 
> i'm an artist before a writer-- hunt me down on instagram or twitter at @goosetooths. give me your fic recs. tell me about your reverse au. talk to me about aziraphale's very very perfect hair.
> 
> a thousand thank-yous to the [gomens party house](https://discord.gg/eEayTxu) discord for always being the best.  
> a few more thank yous to jay n max for putting up with my yelling and being equally as rabid as i am.
> 
> i'd love to hear from you in the comments!  
> (or not in the comments. come to my house and throw rocks at my window and tell me that you liked my characterizations.)


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